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Oftentimes managers will make demands that interfere with ownership of the code. Such as requiring something to be finished in half the time it would take to do
by ilaksh 2y ago
Oftentimes managers will make demands that interfere with ownership of the code. Such as requiring something to be finished in half the time it would take to do it without technical debt. Over and over and over again.
I have had a lot of clients like this. It's very common especially for lower budget projects. You can literally cut corners you don't really want to or just get replaced by someone who does.
They will often also insist on certain technical decisions like choice of programming language or framework.
- justin_oaks 2y agoA cabinet maker has the option to say no because they're the one in charge of accepting the job AND implementing it. At least that's the way the article made it sound. Most of us are cogs in the machine and are given much less autonomy. So what is the "professional" to do if given a job and insufficient time to do it?
- jbmsf 2y agoOur profession doesn't always work the way you describe. Some companies want cogs, some want professionals. I can't give you advice beyond that, there are too many different circumstances. But in most of the places I've worked, it's been developers, not managers, cutting corners. Sometimes these are good choices, informed by product context and trade-offs. Sometimes it's a perceived urgency that doesn't actually exist. But it's almost never a micromanaging boss asking for something specific.
- Aeolun 2y ago> But it's almost never a micromanaging boss asking for something specific. They don’t ask people to cut corners specifically, they just create a culture where speed is paramount above all else. Where the only metric of success is tickets completed per day.
- jbmsf 2y agoI'm sure these managers exist, but there's plenty of places where they don't. My recent experience has been that the managers I work with, when asked, almost always say yes to extending technical work to do a better job and that it's inexperienced developers who either assume they can't have more time or don't know how to ask in an effective way; these are professional skills after all. This doesn't mean that there's never a need to hurry, external deadlines exist, but these are the minority in a healthy organization.
- RangerScience 2y agoYah. Article’s advice about “owning the implementation” is great and all, but limited to places where you’re not blocked from or fired for doing it. Notably, from my small sample size (only small startups) - I don’t think I’ve known anyone who was fired for doing it. So it seems like it’s not a thing we can do… but I bet it’s something we can do in a lot more situations than we think.
- willcipriano 2y agoAdvise them of the issue. If they still want it, their funeral. Anytime I move away from this frame it's not worked out for me.
- travbrack 2y agoExactly. If you choose the approach with no tech debt but takes twice as long, how are you going to hide that from your manager?
- skydhash 2y agoMore often than not, you have n > 1 implementation solutions possibles. The article said to factor the constraints into the choice of solutions, not the solution itself. Like if it would take 6 months to implement a backend, but just 1 month with Firebase, and time is a more important than data ownership, you go with Firebase. Then you prepare a plan if you ever need to migrate off Firebase. If you don't have time to do a custom UI, you go with a components library. That also means knowing the range of possible solutions (aka mastery). If nothing else, you reduce scope. There's a plethora of ways to respect time/monetary constraints without resorting to shoddy code and duck taping.
- manmal 2y agoAbsolutely agree. Relevant here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle
- moffkalast 2y agoNow just add another one and you have the conjoined triangles of success.